Hi and welcome to the reading world!
Today’s another Top Ten Tuesday hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl and today is all about 2021 releases that I’m excited to read but haven’t gotten to pick up yet!
If you’ve read any of these and think they should go to the top of my TBR, feel free to leave a comment! Let’s get into the list.
Chilling Adventures of Sabrina meets The L Word in this fresh, sizzling New York Times bestselling rom-com by Lana Harper. Emmy Harlow is a witch but not a very powerful one--in part because she hasn't been home to the magical town of Thistle Grove in years. Her self-imposed exile has a lot to do with a complicated family history and a desire to forge her own way in the world, and only the very tiniest bit to do with Gareth Blackmoore, heir to the most powerful magical family in town and casual breaker of hearts and destroyer of dreams. But when a spellcasting tournament that her family serves as arbiters for approaches, it turns out the pull of tradition (or the truly impressive parental guilt trip that comes with it) is strong enough to bring Emmy back. She's determined to do her familial duty; spend some quality time with her best friend, Linden Thorn; and get back to her real life in Chicago. On her first night home, Emmy runs into Talia Avramov--an all-around badass adept in the darker magical arts--who is fresh off a bad breakup . . . with Gareth Blackmoore. Talia had let herself be charmed, only to discover that Gareth was also seeing Linden--unbeknownst to either of them. And now she and Linden want revenge. Only one question stands: Is Emmy in? But most concerning of all: Why can't she stop thinking about the terrifyingly competent, devastatingly gorgeous, wickedly charming Talia Avramov?
Payback's a Witch by Lana Harper
Published by Penguin on January 14, 2022
Genres: Fiction / Romance / Paranormal / Witches
Pages: 336
A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul Love in the Big City is the English-language debut of Sang Young Park, one of Korea’s most exciting young writers. A runaway bestseller, the novel hit the top five lists of all the major bookstores, went into twenty-six printings, and was praised for its unique literary voice and perspective. It is now poised to capture a worldwide readership. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female best friend and roommate, frequent nearby bars where they push away their anxieties about their love lives, families, and money with rounds of soju and ice-cold Marlboro Reds that they keep in their freezer. Yet over time, even Jaehee leaves Young to settle down, leaving him alone to care for his ailing mother and to find companionship in his relationships with a series of men, including one whose handsomeness is matched by his coldness, and another who might end up being the great love of his life. A brilliantly written novel that takes us into the glittering nighttime of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning after with both humor and emotion, Love in the Big City is a wry portrait of millennial loneliness as well as the abundant joys of queer life. 
Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park
Published by Grove Press on November 16, 2021
Genres: Fiction / City Life, Fiction / Coming of Age, Fiction / LGBTQ+ / Gay, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Urban & Street Lit, Fiction / World Literature / Korea
Pages: 175
* Finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature * An engrossing, incantatory novel about the legacy of historical crimes by the author of Space Invaders It is 1984 in Chile, in the middle of the Pinochet dictatorship. A member of the secret police walks into the office of a dissident magazine and finds a reporter, who records his testimony. The narrator of Nona Fernández’s mesmerizing and terrifying novel The Twilight Zone is a child when she first sees this man’s face on the magazine’s cover with the words “I Tortured People.” His complicity in the worst crimes of the regime and his commitment to speaking about them haunt the narrator into her adulthood and career as a writer and documentarian. Like a secret service agent from the future, through extraordinary feats of the imagination, Fernández follows the “man who tortured people” to places that archives can’t reach, into the sinister twilight zone of history where morning routines, a game of chess, Yuri Gagarin, and the eponymous TV show of the novel’s title coexist with the brutal yet commonplace machinations of the regime. How do crimes vanish in plain sight? How does one resist a repressive regime? And who gets to shape the truths we live by and take for granted? The Twilight Zone pulls us into the dark portals of the past, reminding us that the work of the writer in the face of historical erasure is to imagine so deeply that these absences can be, for a time, spectacularly illuminated.
The Twilight Zone by Nona Fernández
Published by Graywolf Press on March 16, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Hispanic & Latino, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Political, History / Latin America / South America
Pages: 192
A BEST OF SUMMER READ ACCORDING TO NEWSWEEK, PARADE MAGAZINE, NBC NEWS, LITHUB, AND POPSUGAR! "The most heartfelt read of the summer...a surprising delight of a novel."--Shondaland An unforgettable and heartwarming debut about how a chance encounter with a list of library books helps forge an unlikely friendship between two very different people in a London suburb. Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in Wembley, in West London after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries. Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home. When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again. 
The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
Published by HarperCollins on August 3, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Asian American, Fiction / City Life, Fiction / Friendship, Fiction / Own Voices, Fiction / World Literature / England / 21st Century
Pages: 384
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2021 BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, LIBRARY JOURNAL, BOOKLIST, AND THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY A ruthless princess and a powerful priestess come together to rewrite the fate of an empire in this “fiercely and unapologetically feminist tale of endurance and revolution set against a gorgeous, unique magical world” (S. A. Chakraborty, author of the The City of Brass). Exiled by her despotic brother, princess Malini spends her days dreaming of vengeance while imprisoned in the Hirana: an ancient cliffside temple that was once the revered source of the magical deathless waters but is now little more than a decaying ruin. Praise for The Jasmine Throne: "Raises the bar for what epic fantasy should be." —Chloe Gong, author of These Violent Delights "An intimate, complex, magical study of empire and the people caught in its bloody teeth. I loved it.” —Alix E. Harrow, author of The Once and Future Witches "Gripping and harrowing from the very start." —R. F. Kuang, author of The Poppy War "Suri’s incandescent feminist masterpiece hits like a steel fist inside a velvet glove. Simply magnificent." —Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun "A fierce, heart-wrenching exploration of the value and danger of love in a world of politics and power." —Publishers Weekly (starred review) "This cutthroat and sapphic novel will grip you until the very end." —Vulture "Lush and stunning....Inspired by Indian epics, this sapphic fantasy will rip your heart out." —BuzzFeed News
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri
Published by Orbit on June 8, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Fantasy / Epic, Fiction / Fantasy / Historical, Fiction / LGBTQ+ / Lesbian
Pages: 576
The secrets of the Hirana call to Priya. But in order to keep the truth of her past safely hidden, she works as a servant in the loathed regent’s household, biting her tongue and cleaning Malini’s chambers.
But when Malini witnesses Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a ruthless princess seeking to steal a throne. The other a powerful priestess desperate to save her family. Together, they will set an empire ablaze.
When three delinquents hole up in an abandoned general store after their most recent robbery, to their great surprise, a letter drops through the mail slot in the store's shutter. This seemingly simple request for advice sets the trio on a journey of discovery as, over the course of a single night, they step into the role of the kindhearted former shopkeeper who devoted his waning years to offering thoughtful counsel to his correspondents. Through the lens of time, they share insight with those seeking guidance, and by morning, none of their lives will ever be the same.
The Miracles of the Namiya General Store by Keigo Higashino
Published by Yen Press LLC on September 24, 2019
Genres: Fiction / General, Fiction / Magical Realism, Fiction / Small Town & Rural
Pages: 320
By acclaimed author Keigo Higashino, The Miracles of the Namiya General Store is a work that has touched the hearts of readers around the world.
A moving story about loss, forgetting and female friendship: two women on a roadtrip across Bosnia head towards a lost brother and a collision with the lies they've told themselves about where they're from.Sara lives in Dublin with her partner Michael, their avocado plant, and a naturist neighbour. If little trace remains of her old life back in Bosnia, of her mother tongue, this is not entirely by accident.So when she receives a call from Lejla, the best friend with whom she shared everything until their friendship ended suddenly on one summer day in college, asking her to return to Bosnia, to their home, she surprises herself by immediately saying yes. Lejla wants Sara to drive them from Mostar to Vienna, where Lejla's brother Armin has just been found - Armin who disappeared as a young man during the Bosnian War. Everyone was convinced Armin was dead - except Lejla and Sara.What follows is a road trip, but one that begins to stretch back into the past. Sara is forced to reconsider the things she thought she understood growing up: the best friend she once loved, the academic trials and first sexual experiences that the girls shared, but also the things that separated them: the Serbian Orthodox Christian customs and traditions that Sara's family began to practise, the less Muslimsounding name that Lejla's family hastily pinned to their door, and finally the loss of a brother.In Catch the Rabbit, Lana Bastasic tells the story of how we place the ones we love on pedestals, and then wait for them to fall off, how loss marks us indelibly, and how the traumas of war echo down the years.
Catch the Rabbit by Lana Bastasic
Published by Pan Macmillan on May 27, 2021
Pages: 272
After Rita is found dead in a church she used to attend, the official investigation into the incident is quickly closed. Her sickly mother is the only person still determined to find the culprit. Chronicling a difficult journey across the suburbs of the city, an old debt and a revealing conversation, Elena Knows unravels the secrets of its characters and the hidden facets of authoritarianism and hypocrisy in our society.
Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro
Published by Charco Press on July 13, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Crime, Fiction / General, Fiction / Literary, FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General, Fiction / Political, Fiction / World Literature / Argentina
Pages: 173
“Magnificent in every way."—Samantha Shannon, author of The Priory of the Orange Tree "A dazzling new world of fate, war, love and betrayal."—Zen Cho, author of Black Water Sister She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor. To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything “I refuse to be nothing...” In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness... In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
Published by Tom Doherty Associates on July 20, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Alternative History, Fiction / Fantasy / Historical
Pages: 416
A 2021 NEIBA Book Award Finalist Nebula, Locus, and Alex Award-winner P. Djèlí Clark goes full-length for the first time in his dazzling debut novel Cairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Al-Jahiz transformed the world forty years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. His dangerous magical abilities instigate unrest in the streets of Cairo that threaten to spill over onto the global stage. Alongside her Ministry colleagues and a familiar person from her past, Agent Fatma must unravel the mystery behind this imposter to restore peace to the city—or face the possibility he could be exactly who he seems... Novellas by P. Djèlí Clark The Dead Djinn Universe contains stories set primarily in Clark's fantasy alternate Cairo, and can be enjoyed in any order. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
Published by Tom Doherty Associates on May 11, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Fantasy / Historical, Fiction / Science Fiction / Steampunk
Pages: 464
A Best of 2021 Pick in SFF for Amazon
A Best of 2021 Pick in SFF for Kobo
Included in NPR’s Favorite Sci-Fi And Fantasy Books Of The Past Decade (2011-2021)
The Black God's Drums
The Haunting of Tram Car 015
Ring Shout
There are 10 of the 2021 releases I’m excited to pick up soon. Let me know which one of these you’ve read and loved in the comments!
Thanks for stopping by!
-Rae